Chapter 18 - Keira #2
We ate at the table by the window, the city lights spreading out below us like a second sky.
The food was good—better than good—and the conversation flowed easily.
He told me stories about his childhood, about Mikhail and Demyan and Kirill, about the mother who had tried so hard to give them normal lives in the midst of chaos.
"What about you?" he asked, refilling my wine glass. "You know about my family. The good parts, the bad parts. But I only know fragments of yours."
I tensed slightly, the instinctive reaction I'd developed over years of deflecting questions about my past. But this was Rodion. He already knew the worst of it—that my father had been a monster, that he'd killed my mother, that I'd spent twelve years hiding from his shadow.
"What do you want to know?"
"Whatever you want to tell me. I'm not trying to interrogate you. I just..." He paused, searching for words. "I want to understand you. The parts you don't show anyone."
I took a long sip of wine, buying time. It was strange, being asked to share rather than deflect. Strange and uncomfortable and somehow also a relief.
"I had an aunt," I said finally. "My mother's sister. Hannah. She was the one good thing about my childhood after my mother died."
"Tell me about her."
"She lived in Vermont. Far away from my father's world, which was probably the only reason he tolerated her existence.
" I smiled at the memory. "She had this little farmhouse with chickens and a vegetable garden and shelves full of books.
Every summer, she'd convince my father to let me visit for a few weeks.
Those were the only times I felt like I could breathe. "
"She sounds like a sanctuary."
"She was. She taught me how to bake—really bake, not just follow a recipe.
We'd spend whole afternoons making bread, and she'd tell me stories about my mother when she was young.
Before she met my father. Before everything went wrong.
" I felt the familiar ache that came whenever I thought about Aunt Hannah.
"She's the reason I became a psychologist, actually. "
"How so?"
"She was a social worker. Spent her whole career helping people—foster children, abuse survivors, families in crisis.
She used to say that the most powerful thing you could do for someone was witness their pain without trying to fix it.
Just be present with them." I traced the rim of my wine glass.
"That's what I do now. What I try to do, anyway. "
"Is she still alive?"
"No. She died when I was in graduate school. Cancer." The word still stuck in my throat, even after all these years. "She was the last connection I had to my mother. To anything good from my childhood. Losing her felt like losing my mother all over again."
Rodion reached across the table and took my hand. He didn't say anything—no empty condolences, no attempts to make it better. He just held my hand and let the silence hold.
"I think about her sometimes," I continued quietly. "What she would say about my life now. About the choices I've made. About ending up married to a man from the same world I spent my whole life running from."
"What do you think she'd say?"
I considered the question. Aunt Hannah had been practical above all else—a woman who dealt in realities rather than ideals.
"I think she'd ask if I was happy," I said finally. "And if I said yes, she'd tell me that was all that mattered."
"Are you? Happy?"
I looked at him across the table—this man who had killed for me, married me, upended my entire life in ways I was still trying to understand. A man from the world I'd fled, who somehow made me feel safer than I'd felt in years.
"I think I'm getting there," I said. "I think this might be the closest I've been in a long time."
His smile was like a sunrise. "That's enough for me."
After dinner, we moved to the living room. He put on music—jazz, something slow and moody—and we sat together on the couch, not talking, just existing in the same space. My head was on his shoulder, his arm around me, his fingers tracing absent patterns on my arm.
"The insomnia," I said after a while. "Has it been better?"
"Much better." He pressed a kiss to my hair. "I actually sleep now. Not perfectly, but more than I have in years."
"What changed?"
"You." He said it simply, like it was obvious. "Having someone next to me. Having a reason to let go of the day instead of replaying it over and over."
"That's a lot of pressure to put on another person."
"It's not pressure. It's just the truth.
" He shifted so he could look at me. "You asked once why I kept coming back to therapy, even though I didn't believe in it.
The truth is, I came back because of you.
Because being in that room with you was the only time my brain slowed down enough to feel like I might actually be okay. "
I felt something tighten in my chest. "Rodion..."
"I'm not saying it to make you feel obligated.
I'm saying it because you should know. Because you matter.
Not just as my wife, or as someone I'm protecting, or as a strategic asset in this mess with the Petrovics.
" He cupped my face in his hands. "You matter because you're you.
Because you make me want to be better than I've ever been. "
I didn't know what to say. Didn't know how to hold the weight of his words without crumbling under them. So I did the only thing I could think of—I kissed him.
It was soft at first, gentle, a thank-you I couldn't put into words. But it deepened quickly, heat building between us like it always did, his hands sliding into my hair, my body pressing against his.
"Bedroom," he murmured against my lips.
"Yes."
We didn't make it to the bedroom. We barely made it off the couch before clothes started coming off, hands exploring, breath coming faster. We ended up on the floor, tangled together on the expensive rug, and I lost myself in him completely.
Afterward, we lay there in the darkness, the city lights filtering through the windows, our bodies cooling in the night air.
"We should move to the bed," I said eventually.
"Probably."
Neither of us moved.
"I'm tired," I admitted. "More tired than I should be. The sessions today took more out of me than I expected."
"Then rest. We have nowhere to be."
I closed my eyes, letting the exhaustion wash over me. There was a strange heaviness in my limbs, a bone-deep weariness that seemed disproportionate to what I'd actually done. Probably just stress. Disrupted sleep. The accumulated weight of everything that had happened.
But beneath the tiredness, something else stirred. A feeling I couldn't quite name. Like something was different, something had shifted, though I couldn't identify what or when.
"What are you thinking?" Rodion murmured, his hand stroking my hair.
"Nothing," I lied. "Just tired."
"Then sleep. I'll carry you to bed later."
I smiled against his chest and let myself drift, his heartbeat steady beneath my cheek.
Tomorrow would bring more sessions, more waiting, more uncertainty. But tonight, there was this. Warmth and safety, and the feeling of being exactly where I was supposed to be.